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DOOMSDAY DELAYED — The House voted 257-167 last night to extend most Bush-era tax cuts and delay by two months the sequester, which was originally set to begin taking effect today. House Speaker John Boehner voted for the fiscal-cliff deal, but some of his top deputies did not: Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy and Chief Deputy Whip Peter Roskam all voted against the measure.

For his part, McKEON SUPPORTED THE DEAL, with reservations. “Rather than shield a wartime military from further reductions, this deal leaves the force vulnerable to sequestration’s devastating and arbitrary cuts,” the HASC chairman said in a statement, urging President Barack Obama to work with Congress to pass a permanent sequester fix.

NEXT STOP: THE WHITE HOUSE. In a late-night statement, the president said he’ll sign the bill, but he also noted it’s only a first step. “There will be more deficit reduction as Congress decides what to do about the automatic spending cuts that we have now delayed for two months,” Obama said.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR DEFENSE — The deal offsets its two-month sequester delay with $24 billion in savings, half achieved through a tax gimmick and the other half achieved through discretionary spending cuts. Of those, only about $2 billion would come from DoD and other security agencies during the current fiscal year, according to an analysis by the Stimson Center (http://bit.ly/WjFrcM). Essentially, the deal pays down some — but not all — of the sequestration cuts that otherwise would have taken effect over the next two months.

The deal also means DoD’s civilian workforce can breathe a sigh of relief, at least for now. Pentagon officials have said more than 800,000 civilian employees — the vast majority — would face imminent furloughs under sequestration. But if there’s no sequester agreement by March 1, DoD could find itself in an even worse predicament: It would have just seven months, rather than nine, to carry out the first round of across-the-board cuts before the end of the 2013 fiscal year.

THE NEXT PRESSURE POINT is the debt ceiling, which is set to become a full-fledged crisis next month, when the U.S. government is expected to reach its borrowing limit. Republicans are planning to use the issue as leverage to shield the Pentagon from the budget ax and extract big concessions from the White House on entitlement programs. But the president made clear last night he wants to avoid a debt-ceiling confrontation. “I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed,” Obama said. “Let me repeat: We can’t not pay bills that we’ve already incurred.”

WELCOME BACK TO MORNING DEFENSE, where Santa brought us a cell-phone upgrade for Christmas. We got an iPhone 4S, to replace our half-decade-old flip phone. And we’re slowly warming up to Siri, who offered nothing but sarcasm when asked what she thinks of the fiscal-cliff deal: “I think, therefore I am. But let’s not put Descartes before the horse.”

BOEHNER TO HARRY REID: ‘GO F--- YOURSELF’ — That’s what the House speaker told his Senate counterpart during fiscal-cliff negotiations last week at the White House, according to a behind-the-scenes account of how yesterday’s deal came together by POLITICO’s John Bresnahan, Carrie Budoff Brown, Manu Raju and Jake Sherman. “The harsh exchange just a few steps from the Oval Office — which Boehner later bragged about to fellow Republicans — was only one episode in nearly two months of high-stakes negotiations laced with distrust, miscommunication, false starts and yelling matches,” they report. More here: http://bit.ly/Z9Q7RT

CONGRESSIONAL REAX — Rep. Jim Moran, who voted against the deal, complained last night that it sets up “three fiscal cliffs,” referring to the debt ceiling, the new sequestration deadline and the expiration of the continuing resolution. “We’re going to look back on this night,” the Virginia Democrat warned, “and regret it.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Jeff Miller, who also voted no, said the Obama administration “better not count” on a deal in the next Congress to avert sequestration. “The first thing is that the administration better pay attention — they’ve done nothing to prepare for it and the service chiefs, the [secretary of defense], have all said they’ve been given directions that sequestration would be turned off,” the Florida Republican said.

SHOT: The deal, ultimately intended as a deficit-reduction measure, would actually increase the deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate.

CHASER: The estimate is relative to a baseline that assumes all Bush-era tax cuts would have expired yesterday, “and therefore gives no deficit-reduction credit for the fact that the deal begins to raise rates for the wealthiest Americans,” reports POLITICO’s David Rogers. Here’s his analysis: http://politi.co/Vua0jh. And here’s the CBO score: http://politi.co/WcWHQB

TRIVIA TIME — After making his statement last night on the fiscal-cliff deal, the president left for Hawaii to rejoin his family members, who are vacationing there. Air Force One is set to touch down this morning at which Air Force Base in Honolulu? For the answer, read on.

SPOTTED: CHUCK HAGEL -- The former Nebraska senator was seen at a New Year’s party yesterday afternoon in McLean, Va., where he lives with his family. The spotter was Ryan Colaianni, who works at the PR firm Edelman. “Only in McLean... At a new year’s party with Chuck Hagel,” he tweeted.

Colaianni then said he was surprised by the flood of Twitter responses to his sighting. “So three reporters have asked about Chuck Hagel and one person really doesn’t like him,” he said in a follow-up tweet. “Who is searching Twitter for Chuck Hagel on Jan 1?”

We’re guilty.

RYAN CROCKER: HAGEL FOR SECDEF — The former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan has an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal touting the man believed to be Obama’s first choice for Pentagon chief. “There are no easy answers or prepackaged solutions, and Mr. Hagel understood this from the day he walked into the Senate in 1997,” Crocker writes. “I began my three-year tour as U.S. ambassador to Syria the following year. During that time and beyond, there was never a question in my mind about Mr. Hagel’s support for Israel. Neither was there a question about his support for Middle East peace.” Here’s the full column, for WSJ subscribers: http://on.wsj.com/10KUCTo

TOP TALKER: “Renditions continue under Obama, despite due-process concerns,” by WaPo’s Craig Whitlock — “The Obama administration has embraced rendition — the practice of holding and interrogating terrorism suspects in other countries without due process — despite widespread condemnation of the tactic in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Renditions are taking on renewed significance because the administration and Congress have not reached agreement on a consistent legal pathway for apprehending terrorism suspects overseas and bringing them to justice.

“The impasse and lack of detention options, critics say, have led to a de facto policy under which the administration finds it easier to kill terrorism suspects.” More here: http://wapo.st/ZTtEtu

ICYMI: KIM JONG-UN’S RARE NEW YEAR’S SPEECH — The North Korean supreme leader delivered the country’s first New Year’s Day speech in 19 years, vowing in a televised address to “remove confrontation” between North and South Korea and to reunify the two countries. “The past records of inter-Korean relations show that confrontation between fellow countrymen leads to nothing but war,” he said. The UK Telegraph has more: http://bit.ly/Z7tIEw

SPEED READ --

-- In today’s New York Times, Thom Shanker explains how the decisions Obama faces on how to proceed in Afghanistan are eerily similar to those faced by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s. http://nyti.ms/YPygdS

-- Up to 30 Palestinians were injured in clashes yesterday with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. The clashes occurred “after an undercover Israeli force entered the village to arrest a wanted militant,” NYT reports, citing Palestinian news reports and the Israeli military. http://nyti.ms/Z8zVAd

TRIVIA ANSWER — Air Force One is set to touch down this morning at Hickam Air Force Base, in Honolulu, home to the Pacific Air Forces. The Obama family has been vacationing in Hawaii since before Christmas, but the president had to return to Washington for cliff talks.

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